I would be most happy to be your tester for K6 machines. Although I have the rare K6III+, I believe the architecture is the same for the entire K6 family, except for the added performance enhancements.

Well the build i posted was compiled with mingw, omitting the march/mcpu
directives. Could be that there's a default then for those switches that is
"higher" than K6.

Next try. Maybe copy a 0.70 dosbox.conf into the directory and set core=normal

YES! 😀 Thank you all very much. And my offer to be your K6 tester stands. I'm sure you guys have access to my e-mail address due to requirements for signing up, and feel free to contact me anytime. WD: You are awesome and persistent. The latter reminds me of someone else I know. 😀

Sooooo what exactly are you doing with deskmate now? Is it just for fun
or do you have old datasets or something?
Maybe you can play a bit with it and report back if it really works 😀

OK, now for the confession. It is primarily for nostalgic reasons, although I do have a few DeskMate DOC files still hanging around. There are DOS-compatible versions of DeskMate that I can run without DOSBox, but none that offer the HX's Music and Paint programs. That is because DeskMate Music relies on the Tandy 3-voice sound, and Paint will not run with a VGA driver. PDM2 runs perfectly inside of DOSBox except for the notepad and phone accessories for some reason, which is not that big of a deal.

I was a 25+ year manager for RS (left a few years ago), who actually sold the very first model of the TRS-80. For me, this program harkens back to a time that was simpler and more innocent, and when RS was a very different company. When I mentioned in an earlier post that I had written a ton of DOS batch files in my day, I wasn't kidding, as that is what I "grew up" with. It is what also attracted me to your excellent program, and what you offer to people who want to run older software.

Thanks again.

OK, I discovered why the notepad and phone accessories do not work. It is for the same reason that no other files or configurations can be saved or changed: the program does not allow writing to the disk. This is not necessarily a big deal to me, since I was mainly interested in getting PDM2 to work for nostalgic reasons. But if there is something really quick and easy that I'm overlooking, a note of reply would be appreciated. I should point out that adding -freesize "x" and the end of the mount command makes no difference.

Think it places some files on Z:\ so try setting COMSPEC and PATH
to c:\command.com and c:\ respectively (even though the first does
sound a bit dumb...)

The "set comspec" line was enough, put in quotes and added to the command line per the instructions in readme.txt. Once again, WD, you are the man! If there were an award for best DOSBox customer service, it should be yours.

Canadacow and Harekiet implemented the tandy stuff, so they're the ones to praise 😉

Kudos to all you guys. WD, you asked me to play with the program for a while and report back on its functionality. I have now done so, and I will offer the following in what will likely be my last post on this subject. The fact is that it is 100% working except for one tiny detail. The Paint program calls for use of the F12 key, which does not respond to the program. I seem to recall that the early Tandy keyboards had a slightly different mapping routine than IBM, so I'm quite sure that this is the reason. There is probably a TSR floating around out there that will fix this, but since the mouse can still be used for the function involved, I don't consider it to be worth the effort. In terms of practical functionality, I think that "100%" is still an accurate statement. Once again, this was an excellent effort on the part of the DOSBox team.

Unless the Tandy Deskmate software has an option to use IBM scancodes that later Tandy computers supported, it appears that the Tandy 1000 keyboard scancodes would have to be implemented as a DosBox option to support said software.

1QWERTY (USA) - Tandy 1000
2
3    Scan   Kybd
4    Code  Legend     normal  shift  ctrl  alt  remarks
5    01    ESC          1b      1b    1b   x8b
6    02    1 !          31      21   xe1   x78
7    03    2 @          32      40   x03   x79
8    04    3 #          33      23   xe3   x7a
9    05    4 $          34      24   xe4   x7b
10    06    5 %          35      25   xe5   x7c
11    07    6 ^          36      5e    1e   x7d
12    08    7 &          37      26   xe7   x7e
13    09    8 *          38      2a   xe8   x7f
14    0a    9 (          39      28   xe9   x80
15    0b    0 )          30      29   xe0   x81
16    0c    - _          2d      5f    1f   x82
17    0d    = +          3d      2b   xf5   x83
18    0e    BACK SPACE   08      08    7f   x8c
19    0f    TAB          09     x0f   x8d   x8e
20    10    q            71      51    11   x10
21    11    w            77      57    17   x11
22    12    e            65      45    05   x12
23    13    r            72      52    12   x13
24    14    t            74      54    14   x14
25    15    y            79      59    19   x15
26    16    u            75      55    15   x16
27    17    i            69      49    09   x17
28    18    o            6f      4f    0f   x18
29    19    p            70      50    10   x19
30    1a    [ {          5b      7b    1b   xeb
31    1b    ] }          5d      7d    1d    -
32    1c    ENTER        0d      0d    0a   x8f  MAIN KEYBOARD
33    1d    CTRL          *       *     *     *  CONTROL MODE
34    1e    a            61      41    01   x1e
35    1f    s            73      53    13   x1f
36    20    d            64      44    04   x20
37    21    f            66      46    06   x21
38    22    g            67      47    07   x22
39    23    h            68      48    08   x23
40    24    j            6a      4a    0a   x24
41    25    k            6b      4b    0b   x25
42    26    l            6c      4c    0c   x26
43    27    ; :          3b      3a   xf6   xf8
44    28    ' "          27      22   xf7   xf1
45!   29    UP ARROW    x48     x85   x90   x91
46    2a    SHIFT         *       *     *     *  LEFT SHIFT
47!   2b    LEFT ARROW  x4b     x87   x73   x92
48    2c    z            7a      5a    1a   x2c
49    2d    x            78      58    18   x2d
50    2e    c            63      43    03   x2e
51    2f    v            76      56    16   x2f
52    30    b            62      42    02   x30
53    31    n            6e      4e    0e   x31
54    32    m            6d      4d    0d   x32
55    33    , <          2c      3c   xf9   x89
56    34    . >          2e      3e   xfa   x8a
57    35    / ?          2f      3f   xfb   xf2
58    36    SHIFT         *       *     *     *  RIGHT SHIFT
59!   37    PRINT        10       *    72   x46  SCR PRINT TOGGLE
60    38    ALT           *       *     *     *  ALTERNATE MODE

61    39    SPACE BAR    20      20    20    20
62    3a    CAPS LOCK     *       *     *     *  CAPS LOCK
63    3b    F1           x3b    x54   x5e   x68
64    3c    F2           x3c    x55   x5f   x69
65    3d    F3           x3d    x56   x60   x6a
66    3e    F4           x3e    x57   x61   x6b
67    3f    F5           x3f    x58   x62   x6c
68    40    F6           x40    x59   x63   x6d
69    41    F7           x41    x5a   x64   x6e
70    42    F8           x42    x5b   x65   x6f
71    43    F9           x43    x5c   x66   x70
72    44    F10          x44    x5d   x67   x71
73    45    NUM LOCK       *      *     *     *  NUMBER LOCK
74!   46    HOLD           *      *     *     *  FREEZE DISPLAY
75    47    7 \           37     5c   x93     *
76    48    8 ~           38     7e   x94     *
77    49    9 PG UP       39    x49   x84     *
78!   4a    DOWN ARROW   x50    x86   x96   x97
79    4b    4 |           34     7c   x95     *
80    4c    5             35    xf3   xfc     *
81    4d    6             36    xf4   xfd     *
82!   4e    RIGHT ARROW  x4d    x88   x74   xea
83    4f    1 END         31    x4f   x75     *
84    50    2 `           32     60   x9a     *
85    51    3 PG DN       33    x51   x76     *
86    52    0             30    x9b   x9c     *
87!   53    - DELETE      2d    x53   x9d   x9e
88!   54    BREAK        x00    x00     *     *  CTRL BREAK is the ctrl brk
89                                                 routine
90                                               ALT BREAK is the scroll lock
91!   55    + INSERT      2b    x52   x9f   xa0
92!   56    .             2e    xa1   xa4   xa5  NUMERIC KEYPAD
93!   57    ENTER         0d     0d    0a   x8f  NUMERIC KEYPAD
94!   58    HOME         x47    x4a   x77   xa6
95!   59    F11          x98    xa2   xac   xb6
96!   5a    F12          x99    xa3   xad   xb7
97
98Keyboard layout:
99
100    F1  F2  F3  F4      F5  F6  F7  F8      F9 F10 F11     F12            +       -    break
101   esc  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   0   -   =   backspace  alt  print   7   8   9
102    tab   q   w   e   r   t   y   u   i   o   p   [   ]           hold  numlk   4   5   6
103   control  a   s   d   f   g   h   j   k   l   ;   '    enter     up   home    1   2   3
104 caps  shift  z   x   c   v   b   n   m   ,   .   /  shift  left  down  right   0   .  enter
105                         space
106

dvwjr

At the moment the scancode layout is (mostly) that from enhanced keyboards,
maybe this should be selectable/configurable to have normal scancodes
(like bochs) and tandy1000-compatible ones.

I started out computing on a Tandy 1000 TX. Seeing Deskmate running is something I haven't seen in about 15 years now. It's funny to see Desk Mate telling you it's June 5, 2007! Thanks for all the effort WD! 😀

Now I'll have to waste hours setting up a DOSBOX install with some of my old games. Space Quest 3, Arctic Fox, Stellar 7, Battle Chess... I had a friend with an IBM XT and it was just glorious to compare Tandy 16-color to CGA. He didn't even have a hard drive, while I was loaded up with a 20 meg hard card! Heh heh...

I wonder if I can find Lotus Symphony. I still have DOS 3.20 on a Tandy low-density 3.5" too.

BTW, in paint, you can just do Ctrl-Q to quit instead of F12.

Ctrl-Q takes you all the way out of the program, whereas F12 was designed to return to the "tools" menu, so it is not quite the same. As I said earlier, you can always use the mouse on the bottom of the canvas page to effect a return to "tools," but there does seem to be one exception. Engaging the "text" tool has the effect of temporarily disabling the mouse as soon as the cursor is positioned, and not even Ctrl-Q is functional. It would appear that this is the one instance where "F12" would come in handy, as the only choice is to then Ctrl-F9 out of the entire DOSBox environment.

I knew it was stupid to suggest that my prior post might be the last. But it's also nice to know that I'm not the only DeskMate freakazoid out there. Amazing what they could put on a single 720K diskette in those days.

I have discovered another little quirk that was unexpected. In order to have full write capability with no apparent restrictions, the drive must be set to "A" for PDM2 and designated as a floppy. I have successfully done this with manual entry, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it all from a single command line. Is it possible to mount a floppy A drive and execute a command from that drive simultaneously? If so, any help with the syntax would be appreciated.

dosbox -c "mount A C:\some\folder -t floppy" -c "A:" -c "pdm2"

This guide, combined with WD's earlier COMSPEC suggestion, did the trick.

wd wrote:

At the moment the scancode layout is (mostly) that from enhanced keyboards,
maybe this should be selectable/configurable to have normal scancodes
(like bochs) and tandy1000-compatible ones.

I think you are correct. No way around having a Tandy specific key-mapping at the scan-code level. Market forces eventually made Tandy adhere to the IBM PC-AT & PS/2 101-key standard. The option to support the original proprietary Tandy keyboard should probably be done when some-one has the time.

Right now I'm too busy trying to fix the DosBox v0.70 MIDI handling for the rev00 MT-32 Roland synth and getting my SYSTEM SHOCK v1.5P install finished... 😁 I'm sure a volunteer will appear later..

dvwjr